The Superbowl Shuffle

Tomorrow is the best day of the year. Forget Christmas, forget New Years, even forget National Mustard Day. (Which, by the way, is the first Saturday of August. No really, look it up.) This is Superbowl week. Over twenty weeks of yelling and eating and spitting have come down to this one day. Of course, needless to say, my team (the Jacksonville Jaguars) is not playing in the Superbowl. Judging by the way they played, they were not playing from about the fourth game of the season.

But then again, the Jaguars have never been to a Superbowl, and I’ve still watched the Superbowl since before I could read (fifth grade). Technically, only two groups of fans see their teams get to the big game every year, and yet we will always watch. Think about it, everybody watches the Superbowl, even certain people (cough… women… cough) who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the Denver Broncos and the Backstreet Boys (hint: there is none). But that’s okay, cause in an ideal world, the women will be in the kitchen talking about feelings and all that other unimportant stuff while making food for the men watching the game.

But what is it about the Superbowl that everyone loves? Sure it’s a football game, but it’s more than that. It’s a celebration of everything uniquely American: football, greasy food, watery beer, big TV’s, and commercials. A lot of commercials. In fact, that’s what many people claim is the most interesting part of the Superbowl. These aren’t just any commercials, these companies spend more on thirty seconds that nobody will remember in a week than you and everyone you know will earn in a lifetime.

Which is good in a way, because then they put some actual effort into making the commercial. During regular season games, all you see is truck commercials that appear to have turned into reality shows, with trucks and truckers (with rugged stereo-types like Fireman and Construction written on their shirts) going through Survivor type challenges. Why is it that all car commercials show cars speeding around on empty highways overlooking ocean vistas or rambling through the woods? None of us do that. A real car commercial would show cars going to McDonalds at 2 in the morning or being stuck in traffic.

But if you think those commercials are bad, imagine the commercials that get rejected by the networks. With TV standards now-a-days, you have to put something pretty strange on TV to get people outraged. So I’ll give you three guesses at who got one of their Superbowl commercials rejected by NBC. It’s my longtime nemesis: PETA (I can’t even get through a note about the Superbowl without bashing PETA). The ad is flaunting some study that shows that vegetarian’s have better sex than everyone else. I don’t know who is in charge of PETAs marketing, but I would be willing to bet it is a guy, because every ad PETA has appears to have half-naked women running around. If I had no idea what PETA was and saw their ads, I would think PETA stood for Prostitutes Eat Tomatoes and Artichokes. What we need are more ads like the E*trade baby. I love that guy. I would trust him with my hedge funds. They should also bring back the Quizno’s rats,

Then there is the halftime show. Last year, one of the greatest bands ever, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played at halftime and I couldn’t have been happier. But this year, some idiot thought that people actually like Bruce Springsteen. Well, outside of New Jersey and parts of his immediate family, nobody likes Bruce Springsteen. Studies show that Americans would rather listen to radio static than Bruce Springsteen (data courtesy of PETA). Okay, so I might be a bit biased, because I do not like Bruce Springsteen, and I might actually walk out of the room during halftime. Of course, last year I could have watched the Lingerie Bowl at halftime. For those who don’t know what the Lingerie Bowl is (once again, I am referring to women), it used to be a football game played by models in lingerie. It probably set the feminist movement back fifty years, but sadly it was canceled this year. Not that I’ve ever watched it (it’s pay-per-view), but somehow, knowing it occurred made me feel better about the world.

As for the game itself, I don’t really have a rooting interest, I just hope the game is a close one. And just for the record, my prediction: Steelers 31 – Cardinals 17.